University of North Florida - Osprey Fountains

2010 TCA Tilt-Up Achievement Award - Educational Division

Article tools: Coming soon!

The Osprey Fountains Residential Hall, built to enhance the evolution of the University of North Florida, is a 1,000-bed student residential facility that utilizes 250,000 square feet of Tilt-Up panel surface. The residence hall consists of four, five-story connected residence towers, which house: 120 four-bedroom and 80 six-bedroom, two-bath suites; 20 resident assistant rooms; four guest apartments; two area coordinator apartments; and laundry facilities, lounges, kitchens, study areas and related program spaces. Common-use amenities include multi-purpose meeting rooms, an exercise room, game room, and a convenience store with a snack bar and grille.

Site improvements include a street intersection, 3,500 linear feet of roadway with bike lanes and sidewalks, parking for 1,000 cars and utility infrastructure piping for chilled and hot water from a new Central Plant. Many exterior amenities enhance the facility including a 16-foot-wide pedestrian boardwalk extending approximately 1,000 linear feet across adjacent wetlands leading to the campus, miscellaneous play courts and most notably, two large swimming pools (one is a lazy-river pool) that in conjunction with the building design creates a resort-like atmosphere. The exterior of the five-story residence hall consists of site-cast, Tilt-Up walls formed in a Northern Florida vernacular with standing-seam galvanized aluminum roofing and single hung, operable windows.

To meet the client’s schedule and budget, full height panels (some up to 130 tons and 67 feet tall) were cast and lifted with preinstalled steel ledger angles to support the floor structure. The design and construction team developed a structural system using the ledger angles on the back of the panels and a “D-Beam” steel interior frame to support precast hollow-core planking for the floors. This innovative combination allowed the construction team to quickly put in place 312 total panels to create the base building shell two months ahead of schedule. The structural and architectural Tilt-Up panel techniques used on the project emphasize the “home” aspect of the client’s student housing program to create a safe, fire- and hurricane-resistant building while accentuating the traditional Florida environment to create a strong sense of place. This facility is a model of environmental sensitivity, constructed adjacent to wetlands with a 1,000-foot long bridge connecting over the wetlands back to the main campus.

With LEED Silver Certification pending final review by U.S. Green Building Council, the contractor incorporated slag as a 50 percent replacement of Portland cement, with mixes ranging from 5.9 percent to 8.2 percent recycled content, reducing the amount of virgin material extracted. All installed steel consisted of a minimum 95 percent recycled content, and 35 percent of regional materials were extracted, processed and manufactured within 500 miles of the site. In addition, more than three quarters of construction waste was diverted from landfills.

About the TCA

Founded in 1986, the Tilt-Up Concrete Association (TCA) strives to improve the quality and acceptance of site-cast Tilt-Up construction, a method in which concrete wall panels are cast on-site and tilted into place. Tilt-Up construction is one of the fastest growing industries in the United States, combining the advantages of reasonable cost with low maintenance, durability, speed of construction and minimal capital investment. At least 10,000 buildings, enclosing more than 650 million square feet, are constructed each year using this construction method.

Follow Us

We use LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube to disseminate information about the Tilt-Up industry, gain new members and inform developers, owners and architects about the benefits of using Tilt-Up.